Ruben Volt cruised from pole position to victory in the first race of the weekend at Misano World Circuit in his ALM Motorsport Honda, leading the way from start to finish ahead of the Monlau Motorsport CUPRA of Jenson Brickley, to make it seven different winners from seven starts in this year’s highly-competitive season.

Volt had a perfect launch from pole in his Honda, while Jacopo Cimenes had a slow getaway in his Honda Civic and dropped to fourth behind Brickley’s CUPRA and the RC2 Racing Team Honda of Santiago Concepción.

Eric Gené was making swift progress from seventh on the grid, and soon passed Viktor Andersson’s MA:GP Lynk & Co for fifth, while there was drama for championship leader Jimmy Clairet on the opening lap, with the Audi driver pitting with a mechanical issue on the opening lap.

Concepción was fighting hard to hold back Cimenes for third, with the Italian making a lunge at the final corner on lap three but to no success. Cimenes had another attempt at the hairpin at Turn 14 on the following lap, but only finally completed the move on lap five, overtaking the Spanish driver at Turn 1 for third.

This allowed Gené to get a run and make his way past at the next turn, after which the race settled down, with Volt and Brickley having built a strong lead, nearly two seconds up the road ahead of Cimenes. There was trouble for Gené on the penultimate lap, as he stopped with a front-left puncture, promoting Concepción back to fourth place, with his team-mate Felipe Fernández right behind him in fifth.

Up front, Volt held off Brickley to take the chequered flag just after the sun was setting, claiming his first win since Spa-Francorchamps last year, and helped to propel himself to seventh in the standings.

Brickley’s second place moved the British driver to third in the points ahead of his luckless team-mate Gené, while tenth place for Teddy Clairet saw the Audi driver close to 16 points from his brother Jimmy at the head of championship, and will start tomorrow's reversed grid race from pole position.

The second race of the weekend starts at 12:40 CEST on Sunday afternoon.